


a toe in the water

by firewalking



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Character Death, Death, Drowning, Inspired by The Great Gatsby, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, Rich Lee Minho | Lee Know, also chloroform?, but basically no plot, how is that a tag, idk how to tag this, jisung is drunk, maybe that's a stretch, minho is a liar, yeah that's important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 02:40:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firewalking/pseuds/firewalking
Summary: hi i found this 4 month old masterpiece buried in my google docs titled "the great gatslee" and i felt the need to publicly immortalize it so here u goalso even though this isn't the most graphic thing ever i always want to remind u to read the tags so ... READ THE TAGS





	a toe in the water

**Author's Note:**

> hi i found this 4 month old masterpiece buried in my google docs titled "the great gatslee" and i felt the need to publicly immortalize it so here u go
> 
> also even though this isn't the most graphic thing ever i always want to remind u to read the tags so ... READ THE TAGS

“What’s your name?” Jisung asks, giggling and sipping at the glass of  _ something  _ alcoholic in his hand, which is drastically emptier than that of the boy next to him. But, you miss every one of the shots you don’t take, and Jisung doesn’t get to take many to begin with, so he takes another sip. The drink feels hot inside his throat, contrasting with the chilly pool water he swirls his feet in. He takes a drink, then he dips himself in a little further. Then he needs another drink.

“Seo Changbin,” the brunette boy mutters, keeping his smirk purposely sheepish. Jisung gives him a soft smile in return, another sip of his drink sealed behind his tight lips. His expression is surprisingly stable for a few seconds while he scans the boy’s body.

His hair is sandy and fluffy, as if gently touched by the salty waves of an ocean they didn’t live anywhere near, his skin sunkissed to match. Smooth, catlike features- the curves of his face become more obvious as he lets his head fall back and gazes up at the night sky above. Since he’s abandoned his suit jacket, the form of his body is obvious through his white button-up. Jisung tries his best to ignore it, but his pants, while black, are just as tight. They’re rolled up to his knees, his legs in the pool. The ripples that distort the image of his figure come from Jisung, who barely even notices that he’s started kicking back and forth.

“You don’t look like a Changbin. Or a Seo, for that matter.” Jisung meets the boy’s eyes again. He cocks an eyebrow, repeating the words that can already be gathered from his expression: “Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really.”

The boy shakes his head, laughing a bit at Jisung’s drunken bluntness. “Let me get you another drink, dear, maybe I’ll look like a Seo Changbin when I come back?” He disappears through the patio doors, heading into a kitchen that Jisung only remembers as being  _ big  _ and  _ expensive-looking _ , even though he had been sitting in it just an hour ago.

Jisung lays down against the concrete, feeling himself relax. He presses a hand against his skull. It feels like there’s nothing there- just the way he likes it. The dull hum of the pool filter is enough to fill his head. If he could just be numb all the time and have pretty boys dote on him and fetch him drinks, he would be a damn happy guy.  
  


The boy- what’s name again? Oh, right, Changbin- comes back with a drink in each hand, the fiery color already hypnotizing to Jisung, whose legs have started feeling awfully cold again.

“Do I look like a Seo Changbin now?” the boy asks Jisung, leaning over his splayed-out frame. His face is upside down and his hair drapes away from his forehead, and Jisung finds himself clinging to flat concrete to make himself feel like he’s not spinning. The drink in the boy’s hand keeps going; Jisung can’t even hear the ice clinking against the sides of the glass.

“I don’t know… come a little closer, let me get a good look at you.” The boy obliges, trying not to look too excited. He stalls for a bit- setting the drinks down, adjusting his clothes, undoing a few more buttons on his shirt, and lastly, stretching. He tucks his hands into his back pockets and leans down over Jisung, so much so that their noses almost touch. Every time Jisung looks at him a little  _ too  _ fondly, he pulls away a bit more. Jisung doesn’t even notice.

It’s when the boy averts his eyes from Jisung’s and gazes into the pool that Jisung begs, “Look at me again, I can’t see you.”

“Oh, but you don’t need to, really. Just remember my name- Seo Changbin.”

“Changbin,” Jisung whines, the name leaving his mind the same time it leaves his mouth. “Look at me.”

“But the sky is just so beautiful tonight.” The boy’s voice wavers on the end of his sentence as his eyes latch onto a star close enough to the horizon that Jisung still lingers in his peripheral vision. There’s the slightest turn of his head, arch of his back, and he’s looking at the stars. He’s right where the boy wants him.

And yet, he waits a minute before taking him. Because the sky is quite beautiful tonight, and in it he can already see  <strike> his name </strike> _ Seo Changbin_, he can already see the headlines. It gives him tunnel vision so bad he barely remembers Jisung is there, and entirely forgets that he’ll be seeing him tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. At least, that’s what he’ll tell people. And that’s what they’ll believe.

“Do you believe me?” The boy asks the stars. One twinkles in reply, before its glow fizzles out entirely. “I see.”

“See what?” Jisung asks.

The boy points off into the distance, his finger not even hitting where the star was. He’s just pointing at an empty spot, but that’s all he really needs right now, because Jisung will take it. He follows the boy’s slender finger, starting at his forearm and going through his wrist, his hand, right off the edge, and into absolutely nothing. “I don’t see anything.”

“You don’t need to.”

A white glove blends into the black night as it slips under Jisung’s nose. It feels like the cold, vicelike embrace of the pool water, and this time it wraps itself around him, Jisung doesn’t even get to take another drink. His throat is so full of  _ something,  _ something sweet and sour and so not human, yet he still finds himself wondering if the boy finally kissed him. It feels like a kiss from those sharp, biting lips. It feels like their way of speaking three words Jisung is desperate to hear, no matter how they sound or feel:

“I love you.”

Everything gets a little quieter as Jisung limply falls back, the boy barely catching him under the arms. He sits behind him, and the body naturally rests against his chest. As long as there’s warmth, he wants it for himself, because he can’t bring himself to take another drink of something he can’t have. Warmth. Peace. Love. It’s not for his taking. But people? He ropes them in like nobody’s business. The feeling of a fresh body, the sound of a heartbeat, the glow of a smile. That’s all his, and sitting there with Jisung’s body in his arms, he realizes he can draw it out as long as he wants, and it’ll last as long as he needs it to.

The air is getting cold; he can only imagine how cold the pool is getting. He sits at the edge again, this time keeping his legs out, but he lets Jisung’s fall in. And then his knees go in. Then his hips. It’s a struggle to keep his face above water at this point, so the boy treasures his expression as it is now: face flushed, lips slightly open, eyelashes resting on his cheeks as if he’s only taking a nap right now, and he’ll wake up soon, ready to be checked on and catered to and loved with a fervor that can only be felt in the other boy’s itching hands as he digs through the cabinet under his sink. Human beauty is something you can never find preserved in a jar. But a swimming pool was pretty damn close.

Jisung’s shirt rides up as he sinks in the water, revealing a whole expanse of skin to be saved for someday. He comes to lay face up, his head resting on the small of the back of the boy below him. His careful, sweet-eyed killer leans over the edge of the pool, already feeling a mist on his face as cold as any dead body- and yet, it doesn’t make him shiver in the slightest. He lines up his reflection with Jisung, and asks, not to Jisung, not to the stars, but to whoever might be listening, “Do I look like a Han Jisung now?”

And then, to himself, “Yeah, Lee Minho, you really do.”

**Author's Note:**

> if u made it all the way through thank u for reading!!!!
> 
> if u enjoyed u can drop a comment/kudos/whatever and maybe i'll publish another fic in approximately 2 years


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